


While We Were Hunting Rabbits

by theskywasblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Introspection, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:39:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes all you need is to figure things out for yourself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While We Were Hunting Rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose the background for the story is this: the prompt _Dean and Cas trying to figure each other out while dealing with the fallout of Sam getting his soul back_ \- and as for 6.11...well that doesn't happen. Title from a Matthew Good Band song I listened to excessively while writing.

_"Are you sure you want to do this?"_

 _Sam is starting to wake up, making choked little snuffling noises as he returns to consciousness. He rocks his head unsteadily and there's a long, pink ribbon of blood and spit connecting his lips and chin to the front of his shirt._

 _Dean's starting to feel light-headed from the blood running down his arm; it's taking all his concentration to form the symbols properly on the floorboards, he really doesn't have the strength to waste on anything else._

 _"Of course I do Cas - of course."_

 _He's not so sure anymore, though. There's this feeling in the pit of his stomach like he's in an elevator that's dropping too fast, like he's in freefall._

 _But this has to be the right thing; he's bleeding all across the floor and there's no going back now._

 _"Oh...God."_

 _Sam is bleary-eyed, his head still lolling like his neck's not quite strong enough to hold it up, but he's coming around, looking at the symbols on the dirty hardwood floor like he knows exactly what they mean._

 _"Dean - please - don't do this. Don't make me do this."_

 _"Sorry Sammy," Dean traces out the last symbol, pushes to his feet. He wobbles a little, and feels Cas' hand on the back of his shoulder, supporting him. "It's for your own good."_

 _Sam starts screaming the moment Dean begins reciting the incantation. He doesn't stop for a very, very long time._

***

He’d passed out, probably – one minute he was listening to Sam scream and scream and _scream_ like Dean was pulling his skin off in half-inch ribbons – and the next minute he was looking at the water-stained mess of the ceiling, feeling rusted bedsprings dig into his spine and listening to the earth-shattering silence.

“He still alive?”

“Yes.” Cas’ voice sounded more raw in his throat than ever. “More or less.”

They hadn’t been able to get Sam into the bed. Even if they’d been able to make him stop screaming he’d railed against their touches like they burned him – all fists and feet and teeth – and though Cas couldn’t feel the blows the way Dean did, they’d both worried about Sam hurting himself, and so they’d tried to make him comfortable on the floor with a dingy mattress and a tangle of blankets.

It hadn’t stopped the screaming, but somehow it made Dean feel like a little bit less of a bastard.

Dean sat up and scrubbed a hand hard across his face, digging his blunt fingernails through the layer of stubble on his cheeks. His arm ached from the long wound, and the bandages were stained, damp on the outside with blood, but he ignored it, biting off the irritation he felt at the spark of pain as he bent his elbow.

Cas stood by the boarded up window, leaning a little against the splintered frame like he was too tired to stand straight. Lately Cas always seemed exhausted; Dean could sympathize. Sam was asleep for the first time in over a year – more or less – his eyes were definitely closed, but the way he moaned and thrashed in the ratty tangle of blankets he probably wasn’t getting any real rest. Sometimes he would be almost still, wouldn’t roll and kick, but his body would still shake out of his control, like some kind of deep muscle seizure, and then he’d be back to rolling, throwing his massive fists around like he could beat away whatever was eating at the inside of his head.

"I have to go." Cas said, keeping his voice low like he was afraid of disturbing the silence.

"Yeah," Dean scrubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead, feeling for a moment like his skull was going to collapse under the pressure. "I figured. I'll...see how he does for a day or two, then I'll take him up to Bobby's. Seems the safest place."

Cas crossed the room – weirdly light and graceful on his feet, as always – and stood almost toe to toe with Dean. He'd never really caught on to the concept of personal space, and Dean had learned to stop minding. This time, he even less than minded; part of him wanted Cas to crawl right up inside his personal space until he could feel the heat coming off Cas' skin and inhale his weird, perpetually clean smell...he figured it was just stress, panic. He wanted something comfortable, something reassuringly familiar.

He wanted Cas to stay – for any number of reasons, some he wouldn’t admit to – but every time he thought about asking for it, he realized how stupid it was. Cas might hang around and play sometimes at being part of their little team, but he was a soldier of Heaven, and that would always come first.

They traded one of those long, silent moments that with anyone else seemed bizarre and uncomfortable, then Cas reached out and put two fingers to Dean's forehead and Dean felt the cold, prickling, almost electro-static rush through his body that meant Cas had healed the wound on his arm.

"Thanks."

Cas shook his head. "Don't thank me yet."

And then Dean was alone with his brother.

***

“You just _had_ to go an’ do it – idjit.”

“I should have just left him like that?” Dean poured himself a glass of Jim Beam and knocked it back in a single breathless swallow. Even though he didn’t really want any more – he was exhausted, and faintly nauseous even without alcohol in his bloodstream – he poured himself another and tossed it back too. “You – of all people – are telling me Sam was better without his soul?”

“Not a better _person_ ,” Bobby sighed, shaking his head as he pulled the whiskey out of Dean’s reach and made for his own glass. From up above their heads came a long, desperate howl, like the sound of a wounded dog and the colour fell out of Bobby’s cheeks as he sloshed liquor across the counter. “But better off. Better off than this mess. But you boys got a damn problem with leaving well enough alone.”

“Don’t feed me that bullshit line,” Dean knew the screaming wasn’t going to stop on its own, it never did. He shoved his glass over to the edge of the sink and headed for the stairs. “Sam is gonna be fine. He’s tough, he’ll come through this.”

He’d been telling himself that for the last five goddamn days, and repeating it over and over again wasn’t making it any more real. The first two days, Sam had been more or less asleep – if tossing in the grip of perpetual nightmares for forty-eight hours really counted as sleep – on the third day Dean had managed to get him into a lucid, semi-awake state and shepherd him into the Impala for the drive to Bobby’s. Since then, Sam still mostly slept, but he spent maybe an hour or two every day sitting up in bed, staring at the wall – otherwise, nothing much had changed.

And maybe things wouldn’t change – Dean would be lying if he said he didn’t have doubts, regrets about forcing Sam’s soul back inside him, like forcing someone’s growing feet into an undersized pair of shoes – but dammit he had promised, _promised_ that he would never let his little brother become a monster, and soulless, well, that was about as close as you could get. If he couldn’t stick to the one promise he’d ever made that really mattered, then he couldn’t stick to anything.

And Sam had always had the craziest fucking ability to pull off a win at the last possible second; Dean could still hang on to that.

But _God_ he really wished Sam would just stop screaming.

And then he did, abruptly, the minute Dean's hand touched the bedroom doorknob, choking off with a sort of strangled whimpering noise that made Dean's heart drop down into the bottoms of his socks, made his free hand itch for the butt of a gun.

There was someone sitting on Sam's bed, in the near dark, straight-backed with a hand on between Sam's shoulder blades, and Dean's first, panicked thought was _Yellow-Eyes_ \-- except no, hell no; the bastard was dead, and he didn't wear a trenchcoat.

"Cas."

"Hello Dean."

Cas' coat was torn and there was a cut above his right eye leaking a long, sluggish stream of blood down the side of his face, but Cas didn't seem to notice; his attention was focused completely on rubbing circles on Sam's back with one hand. Sam's eyes were going a mile a minute under his closed lids, but at least he was quiet.

"I believe I have comforted him."

"Yeah, thanks." Dean shut the door behind himself, suppressing a cough. The room reeked of feverish, unwashed skin – he really had to try and convince Sam to get into the shower soon. "Uh -- you've got a little something..." He gestured vaguely to his own face in demonstration.

Cas looked confused for a moment, then wiped a hand across his face, banishing both the blood and the cut in a single movement.

"Rough day at the office?"

"I wasn't in an office..."

Dean bit back a sigh, "Never mind." He struggled for some common ground – had it always been this hard to talk to Cas? It didn't feel like it. "Sam is...he's doing a little better."

Cas gave him a look that was both patiently hopeful and patently disbelieving; it made one part of Dean slither with anger and another part cold with dread. He just wanted someone to tell him, in simple English without any if’s or maybe’s, that Sam was going to be okay. Of course Cas was totally the wrong guy for that, and Bobby wasn’t exactly any good at it either; so all Dean could do was turn the words into a steady chant in the back of his head and hope they might eventually come true by sheer force of will.

“I could stay,” Cas said suddenly; he was still sitting, weirdly still except for the movement of his arm, rubbing those little circles on Sam’s back – and where had he even learned that? There was a vague memory, somewhere in the back of Dean’s mind, of doing the same thing as Cas hunched over a motel toilet, puking up an unholy amount of White Castle burgers. “For a short while. You look tired, Dean.”

Dean hovered somewhere between _No shit, Sherlock_ and _Look who’s talking_ , but instead he said, “Don’t you have a war to fight – dissenters or whatever to round up?”

He felt bad for pointing it out – not guilty, exactly, but almost...panicked – like he was reminding Cas that he belonged anywhere but there, with them, when what Dean felt was exactly the opposite.

Cas looked away, with that expression on his face that meant he was looking at something far beyond the fading paint on the bedroom wall. “The war isn’t going anywhere.”

***

Sioux Falls Public Library wasn’t exactly a wealth of information on mental health issues. Secretly, Dean suspected Bobby had gathered up most of the books and burned them so that nobody in town would call the men in the white coats to take him away years ago. Still, Dean read everything he could dig up – from Sigmund _a cigar is just a cigar except when it’s not_ Freud to _Chicken Soup for the Soul_ and came up with shit.

There were no easy answers, which fucking sucked, because Dean was an easy answer sort of guy – he operated best with solutions like _if it moves, shoot it_ \-- but this wasn't a problem he could solve with a gun.

He wasn't sure this was a problem he could solve _at all_ ; but dammit, he was going to do his level-fucking-best to salvage the situation. The trouble was, he had tunnel-vision, a serious case of it; Sam had it too - it was inherited after all – a pathological inability to think beyond actions to consequences. All any of them could do was look at the consequences afterward and _well fuck it all, this is what I'm going to do next_.

Two weeks in and he was beginning to entertain the thought that Sam might need real, professional psychological help to get through whatever this was, except that he couldn’t exactly take his brother to a shrink and say _he didn’t have his soul for eighteen months, it was locked down in Hell where a pair of angels used it for a ping-pong ball while his body walked around on Earth and did things I don’t even know about. Can you fix him?_

Sam would end up permanently in a loony bin wearing a diaper and being spoon-fed lithium – and if Dean was really lucky, he’d end up in a padded room himself.

When he'd been paging over and over through one of Bobby's theology books earlier in the week, desperately looking for something that might help, Cas had said to him _there is no precedent for the things that have happened to Sam, there is nothing written about this sort of thing anywhere in all the world_ and Dean had gotten so _angry_ at that he had literally seen red. He'd thrown the book across the room, broken Bobby's table lamp with the rock-hard spine of it, and shouted, _if you're not going to be fucking helpful then just go away!_ Which was uncalled for, because Cas _had_ been helpful. He'd stayed two for days, watched over Sam while Dean was more or less in an insomnia-induced coma; he'd ignored his responsibilities in Heaven, which was something he probably couldn't really afford to do.

Cas was still losing the war, Dean knew it – Cas had pretty much admitted it ages ago, though no in so many words – even now that they’d managed to shove Raphael in the big Time Out Chair until he could learn to play nicely with his brothers, which would probably be never. His supporters were still being four-star assholes and trying to cause a world of shit, and Cas was stuck with whatever he thought was his duty, trying to force them all to shape the fuck up, but not getting much of anywhere.

Cas should have told his brothers to go fuck themselves, left them to wallow in their own damn mess. But he was a stubborn son of a bitch – a lot like Dean himself – and there he had this unshakable belief that he could make them see things his way. The more he failed, the more he looked like he was collapsing in on himself with frustration and sorrow.

And Dean felt like shit for adding to his guilt, because he didn’t need or deserve that.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs startled Dean away from reading the same paragraph for the hundredth time – he knew it wasn't Bobby, who was in Asshole-nowhere, Maine with Rufus, locked in mortal combat with what was apparently the most determined poltergeist _ever_ \-- but it still shocked the hell out of him when Sam walked into the kitchen.

"Sam?"

He didn’t answer, just stood there, staring at Dean. His eyes were fever-bright, with dark circles underneath accentuated by the stubble on his face, and his hair hung lank and oily beyond all hope. Sam just stared and stared, swaying slightly on his feet, and just as Dean opened his mouth to ask if he was okay, Sam doubled over and spilled his guts all over the kitchen floor.

“Dude – dude!” Dean scrambled up, hopping over the mess and steering Sam with a hand on one shoulder, “In the sink!”

Sam hunched over the sink, palms flat and sweaty on the countertop, and spit a long ribbon of saliva and bile, making tiny, hitching noises as Dean grabbed a sponge and worked on the mess on the floor, suppressing his own gag reflex with fierce determination.

“Don’t worry about it Sammy, it’s fine,” he found himself repeating the words over and over to cover up the sound of his brother retching. “Nothing a little bleach won’t fix.”

He cleaned up the mess the best he could, and when Sam stopped dry-heaving he put Sam down on the couch, and then he gathered up all the books, took them out, and tossed them into the truck of the Impala, figuring he’d return them to the library as soon as Bobby got back.

There was probably nothing in them that could help Sam anyway.

***

Cas was standing, silent and block-still, on the edge of the cliff. When Dean looked at him out of the corner of his eye, he could see wings, black and endless, stretching out behind him, catching the cold wind.

He was dreaming.

“Everything okay Cas?”

Cas looked at him, and his face was sad – the saddest fucking thing that Dean had ever seen in his life, and he’d seen Sam, at six years old, mourning the death of his favourite stuffed rabbit, caught in the door of the Impala during a hasty, late-night escape from a compromised apartment.

“I am...” Cas tried, then shook his head, as if he couldn’t find the words, or didn’t think they were important.

“What’s going on? Are you...” Dean looked around, trying to figure out where they were. It didn’t look like a place he would dream of, not really, but there was nothing specific or familiar about it. It could have been any rock-face anywhere in the world.

Cas stirred, with a sound like rustling feathers. “I am alone, Dean.”

“Tell me where you are, Cas – tell me where this is and I’ll come help you.” He could feel panic rising, could and nauseating. He struggled to convince himself the sky wasn’t getting darker, that the wind wasn’t whipping hard against his face, tearing feathers free from Cas’ wings.

“You can’t help me.”

The wind was going so fast, so hard that Dean could see it pushing Cas forwards, tipping him over the edge – he was going to fall, and he didn’t have nearly enough feathers left to lift him up.

“Cas!”

***

Dean sat bolt-upright in bed, as instantly awake as if someone had dumped ice water over his head, whatever he had been dreaming falling away like sand through his fingers, superseded by the thought _what the fuck is that noise?_

It was steady, repetitive -- _clclack...clclack..._ \-- too distant to be truly dangerous, too close to be ignored. Dean swung his legs over the side of the bed and scratched the sleep from his eyes with one hand, reaching for the gun under his pillow with the other. He had a foot in the hallway when he realized what it had to be – the screen door downstairs banging against the latch, because the damn thing didn't catch properly unless you actually made _sure_ it was caught; and Dean was sure, so sure that he had checked it before stumbling up to bed because Bobby had practically beat into him how annoying it was to have the thing banging around in the middle of the night and _if you can’t close a goddamn door behind yourself properly then don’t come through it in the first place_.

The inside door was open, swung right back wide, the screen door was banging in the June wind, and Sam wasn’t on the couch, where Dean had left him.

“Sam! Sam!” Dean’s voice echoed through the scrap yard like a roll of thunder. Dean held his breath, tapped the gun restlessly against his thigh and strained his eyes. The lights scattered throughout the yard made the shadows in between seem even thicker and panic battered against Dean’s ribs like a hammer. How far could Sam go – how long had he been gone -- _where_ would he go?

“Sammy! Goddammit Sam if you’re out here you answer me!”

Dean jogged across the yard in his sock feet, thinking he would just get to the Impala, roll down the road real slow with the high-beams on and fucking _find_ Sam somehow; but when he pulled open the driver’s door, glancing into the back seat on pure instinct – because you could never be too careful when you’d left a car unattended – there was Sam asleep across the bench, curled on his side with his knees tucked up, one arm under his head, still and quiet.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam.”

He took one of the emergency blankets – the _stranded in the middle of nowhere, in the middle January with a dead alternator_ blankets that smelled of gunpowder and salt – and tossed it over Sam as best he could. Sam made a low snuffling noise and shifted against the upholstery, but didn’t wake.

He wondered if Sam was ever afraid to sleep after going more than a year without it, if he worried about waking up back in the cage, back at the mercy of Michael and Lucifer, back beyond Dean’s reach. Dean had worried about it for months after he returned from Hell, was forever expecting to open his eyes and find himself back on Alistair’s rack with his entrails around his knees.

He still had nightmares sometimes, not that he would ever admit to that.

Nightmares...before he’d be woken up by the banging door, he’d had some kind of nightmare too, but he couldn’t remember it now, just the uneasy, panicked feeling that went with it. That was nothing new, he had plenty of nightmares.

He could have gone back inside, back to a warm, relatively soft bed, but instead Dean closed the driver’s side door, curled himself against it, and fell into an uneasy doze.

***

“I guess it makes sense...” Bobby pressed a bag of frozen peas to the impressive lump on his forehead – not bothering to take off his cap first – and lowered himself gingerly onto the couch. Dean wouldn’t ever say it, because actually he liked his balls right where they were, thanks, but Bobby was probably getting old. “Sam’s looking for what he finds familiar. Safe.”

"Bobby, this whole damn place is familiar..."

"Do I look like Miss Cleo to you?" Bobby snapped, furious and sore, and Dean felt a tiny wash of guilt for going at him right from the minute he stepped through the door; but he was in unknown territory here – he needed something familiar too. "I don't know what the Hell is going on in Sam's head – never did. I don't know what's going on in yours most of the time either. Now could you give me five minutes of peace?"

Dean slunk outside, feeling like he was five years old again and had asked too many questions -- _can’t we stay here just one more day Daddy? Why do you stay awake all night and watch Sammy sleep? When are we gonna go home?_ \-- and sat on the front steps. His body pulled forward, spine arching in an exhausted slump and it was everything he could do to stay upright. Sam watched him from not twenty feet across the yard, sitting on the hood of the Impala; he had an expression on his face that wasn’t in Dean’s admittedly massive lexicon. The Book of Sam was closed to him, the pages glued together, and Dean was afraid to start pulling them apart, afraid of the damage that might be done.

***

When Dean was a kid, Bobby’s scrap-yard was the perfect game of hide-and-seek, with the added challenge of trying to avoid a serious case of tetanus adding just the right flavour of risk to keep the Winchester boys occupied for hours.

Sam was always the best hider, silent, patient. Dean got itchy feet curled in the backseat of old junkers for too long, got tired of waiting for Sam to find him, always did something to give himself away – most of the time on purpose – because all that silence and loneliness ate away at him.

Even now, he found silence awkward and oppressive. Silence meant unhappiness; silence meant stifled arguments waiting to explode; silence meant he was alone.

Dean shivered, sliding back farther on the hood of the old Dodge, feeling a patch of rust catch at the seat of his jeans, and chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute before pressing his hands together.

“Cas...”

“Yes Dean?”

“Jesus!” Dean startled and nearly fell backwards through the old Dodge’s missing windshield. “I little warning!”

“You called, I answered.” Cas grumbled bitchily, poking at the driver’s side mirror with an idle finger as if it had personally offended him. At least he didn’t have blood on his face this time, though the hem of his trenchcoat looked singed – it could have just been his imagination. “Is something wrong with Sam?”

“Dude,” Dean was surprised by how much the unspoken _you only call when you need something from me_ stung at him. “I don’t always call because something’s wrong with Sam. I was...” he hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out how to say his next sentence without sounding like a total chick. “Were you poking around in my dreams last night?”

“No.” Cas tipped his head in that way that always made Dean think of a Cocker Spaniel, “Is everything alright Dean? You don’t look well.”

“Great,” Dean laughed, rubbing his hand across his eyes, “point out all my flaws, why don’t you? I’ve had shit sleep, that’s all. Sam’s been sleeping in the Impala every night, and I don’t like him being out there alone, ya know?”

“So you did ask me to come here for Sam.”

“Jesus – what are you – a jealous girlfriend?” Dean practically bit his tongue at the outburst, “I just had a dream, that’s all.”

“You had a dream...about me?” Dean was sure he was imagining it, but Cas actually looked flattered.

“Don’t read too much into it Freud. I’ve been sleep-deprived for ages. I’m surprised I’m not dreaming about Heffalumps.” Cas gave him the classic _I don’t understand that reference_ face, and Dean cut him off with a quick, “Never mind. Forget I said anything. Don’t you have dissident angels to round up or something?”

Cas’ face turned thunderous, and the hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stood up.

“In the future, if you have nothing of import to discuss, do not waste my valuable time.”

There was a sharp flutter of wings, and then Dean was alone in the scrap-yard again, muscles humming with tight irritation and the beginnings of a headache in his right temple.

“Right – because worrying about you isn’t _of import_ \-- sure!”

Even to his own ears, he sounded like a four-star asshole.  
***

Dean would do anything for Sam; it was very much a matter of public record. He’d taken beatings in bar fights, more than his fair share of blows from hunts gone south, and he’d re-directed as much of their dad’s anger as he could in the years they’d all been together. He’d uttered the words _it’s not Sam’s fault_ more times than he could ever be expected to remember.

Emptying out the Sioux Falls Grocery’s entire supply of whole milk and Lucky Charms was far and away from being the worst thing he had ever done for Sam.

Actually, the worst thing had been years earlier, in a pool hall somewhere in Broward County, when some drunk son of a bitch had cornered seventeen year old Sam by the back exit and tried to cop a feel. Sam broke his nose. Dean broke his jaw, his cheekbone, most of his teeth and left the bastard in a pool of his own blood in an empty alleyway.

On the top shelf of the storage cupboard under the stairs in Bobby’s house there was a cardboard box full of VHS tapes – mostly Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo, most recorded right off the TV years earlier, complete with vintage commercials for Transformers and Cabbage Patch Dolls. It was a simple matter to put the TV itself back in working order – pull the back off, wiggle wires, adjust tubes. A person could do that with the old sets, be trusted to maintain them if they had any common sense and enough will. Couldn’t make those fancy-ass plasma screen ones work again with your own hands, that was for sure. It was the same way with the new cars – like Lisa’s fancy SUV with the rear-view camera so she didn’t run over Ben’s bike in the driveway (because she had – twice). The minute those _marvels of technology_ broke down there was nothing you could do, you had to take it in, had to trust someone else’s hands to look after the thing, and that just wasn’t even right. For Dean, it had to be his own hands that built up and cared for the things he had, no exceptions.

Bobby’s old VCR still worked well enough, though Dean had to take the casing off, wipe down the heads with a damp cloth before the thing would agree to play a single tape. He got a short, warm thrill of pride when Bugs Bunny finally danced his way across the screen, Shanghaiing Elmer Fudd into a barber’s chair and crooning _”Welcome to my shop...let me cut your mop...daaaaain-ti-ly”_

When Sam saw it, he was _rapt_. Hell, Dean was pretty rapt himself – Bugs Bunny was comic gold – and that night, sometime around midnight as Dean crawled into the front seat of the Impala and let sleep creep up on him accompanied by Sam’s low, soft snores, he thought _Sam smiled today Cas. I smiled today. You should have been here. Maybe you would have smiled too._ and then at the last minute before he dropped off _hope you’re fighting the good fight._

***

June crept solemnly into a scorching July. Dean said his prayers to Cas and barely heard a peep in return. It worried him, but Cas could look after himself, and Dean was pre-occupied watching Sam come back to himself a little bit at a time.

Sam spent days at a stretch watching Looney Tunes and living mostly on Lucky Charms and carrot sticks with peanut butter. Sometimes he took long, heel-dragging walks around the scrap yard or beat at the punching bag Bobby had hanging up in the basement until he couldn’t lift his arms up anymore.

Those were good days.

On bad days he would sit on the couch, the porch, or the hood of the Impala and just sort of...stare at nothing for hours. Sometimes his hands, pressed tight against his thighs, would shake. Sometimes he would sleep through a whole day, sometimes two. Some days his nerves were so flayed raw that his temper was a dropped pencil or a poorly timed cough away from critical mass; he’d throw his fists against the drywall, tear down stacks of books and just scream wordlessly, like he couldn’t hold it in.

Sam on bad days was a lot like Sam at two years old, except that he couldn’t be soothed by his favourite stuffed rabbit or by being allowed to chew on Dean’s fingers.

Sam on good days was almost like Dean’s brother again, except that he didn’t speak; not a sentence, not even a single word.

***

The Impala didn't really need the overhaul, but Dean was running short on things to do that didn't involve hovering over Sam or getting on Bobby's nerves, so one morning when he just _knew_ that kicking around the house would bring nothing but trouble, he jacked his baby up and put himself to work doing every kind of maintenance he could think of that didn't involve outright rebuilding the engine.

It was decent work – hot and filthy, sure, but it was something he could _do_ without question. Up to his elbows in grease, surrounded by a scattering of tools, he felt capable again, relieved - vindicated even.

He worked on the Impala all day, and dragged himself back into the house with sunburn on the back of his neck and a perfect, slow grin on his face, headed straight to the fridge for a beer and was caught halfway by a familiar voice.

"I don't understand - if the coyote wants to catch the roadrunner, why are the traps so complicated? A simple rope..."

"Cas, man, that's not the point. The crazier the trap is, the funnier it is when it blows up in his face."

"Sam?" Dean stepped into the living room, and watched his brother's teeth snap together like someone had socked him in the jaw. Cas sat on the couch next to him wearing a fairly typical expression of calm bewilderment – he had no idea at all why Dean was staring at Sam like he was something miraculous and awful or why Sam curled in on himself and stared at the floor while Wile E. Coyote went sky-high on a bad batch of Acme dynamite.

***

"He's been talking to you – really talking?"

Cas looked confused. Bobby looked away. Dean felt anger rolling up from the pit of his belly like a bad storm. Secrets – fucking everyone keeping secrets – Sam locked up inside his head, Bobby hidden away behind those bitter _idjit_ 's and _Do I look like a magic eight-ball to you_ 's, and Cas with his far-away holy war. It pissed Dean off like nothing else that he was just some kind of footnote in their lives -- _don't bother telling Dean anything. He doesn't need to know_.

Outside, Sam wandered a circle around the Impala, hand on the body, like a man inspecting a horse, then climbed onto the hood and sat, looking at nothing in particular.

"For fuck's sake Bobby, I've been telling you every goddamn day how worried I am about this radio silence thing..."

"Christ!" Bobby snapped and then glanced towards Cas, looking worried. When the angel didn't say anything about his casual blasphemy or make a move to smite him, Bobby continued. "If you've got a problem about Sam – with Sam – maybe for once try talkin' to _Sam_ about it! I am _done_ holdin' you boys' hands and tellin' you to make up!"

"I didn't..." Dean started, meaning to say _do anything wrong_ or maybe _do anything to him_ , except that he knew the words were a lie before they even left his lips, and so he floundered, and Bobby left the room before he could find a proper explanation.

Cas just stood there, watching him and didn't say a thing.

"Sam hates me," Dean said, finally, mind reeling, stomach sick. He remembered Sam, just standing there, almost in the same exact spot, puking all over the tiles, the ripe, sour smell of bile filling the kitchen.

"He's your brother," Cas responded, and with the heaviness in his voice Dean didn't know if that meant _don't be stupid_ or _of course he does_.

***

Love could be a twisted thing, a thing of smooth edges, but too many sharpened corners. Dean had hit every one of those corners where Sam was concerned, at one point or another. The problem was, he didn’t actually know how to avoid them – except to, well, _avoid_ them – which usually led to more problems in the long run, but was ingrained in his bones.

Cartoons seemed like the answer. They worked for Sam, anyway, so Dean camped himself on the couch with a beer and a bowl of popcorn and waited for the answer to come to him.

What came to him was Cas. He settled himself on the couch next to Dean in that fussy sort of way that always made it seem like he was horrified to be using his ass for anything, and fixed his gaze on the TV.

“You’ve been gone a while.” Dean ventured.

“Yes,” Cas agreed blankly. There was a mixture of curiousity and horror on his face as he watched Foghorn Leghorn feed a chewbone full of dynamite to the farm dog.

“I tried praying, but you didn’t answer.” He was probably bitch-facing hopelessly, but whatever. “Guess it was okay though, since it was _nothing of import_.”

“If I could help you with Sam, I would. My abilities are needed elsewhere.”

Dean watched him out of the corner of one eye, “So not all’s quiet on the Western Front, then?”

“No. As I have said before, I would rather be here, under all circumstances.”

Dean didn’t seem to know what to say that wouldn’t sound awkward, condescending or pathetic, so he bit his tongue instead.

“Bobby is right, you should talk to Sam.” Cas frowned as, on the screen, the dog was struck into unconsciousness with a giant mallet. “I don’t understand why animal abuse is meant to be amusing.”

Dean’s lips pushed upward at the corner it what could have almost been a smile. "Ya know, I don't get it either. That rooster is a douchebag."

It seemed ridiculous that Cas would want anything like this – a life sitting next to Dean, imitating half-unconsciously his slightly slouched, spread-legged posture, on a ragged, sagging sofa in front of a static-filled television in Bobby Singer's cluttered house in the middle of a scrap yard in South Dakota – He was an angel, all things powerful and holy; but sitting there he pretty much just looked like a guy who’d had a really long day at the office and needed a beer like you wouldn’t believe.

"Hey Cas," Dean elbowed him, not with malice, but enough to make Cas twitch unconsciously, "you look like someone shit in your Cornflakes. You hate cartoons that much?"

"No, I was...thinking."

"Not about anything good."

"No."

"I guess..." Dean ventured after a moment's silence, his face still fixed on the television screen, "Since we’re sharing advice on brothers, you wouldn't listen to me if I told you to just...ya know, leave yours alone a while; wait for them to figure it out on their own?"

"I don't have that luxury. It’s too dangerous."

“Might burn the house down if you leave them alone, huh?”

“Something like that,” Cas agreed numbly. “I have no legitimate reason to stay here.”

“Right.”

 _Now if someone could offer to hit me over the head with a mallet,_ Dean thought, _I’d be totally okay with that._

***

“I made burgers.”

Sam glanced sideways at him, and that was all. The evening was sick-hot, roaring with the sound of singing crickets, and honestly, Dean could care less if Sam wanted to give him the silent treatment for the rest of fucking eternity, he just wanted a beer and a burger and to slouch in the living room with Bobby’s cheap oscillating fan blowing on his face for a few hours.

“Sam – food.”

Sam's hand, resting on his thigh in a fist, loosened with obvious effort. It was pretty damn clear that they weren't going to be able to ignore whatever this was into submission – which was a shame, because as far as Dean was concerned ignoring a problem until it went away was laughably easy compared to trying to talk about it.

"Alright," Dean said finally, pulling all his courage together by the frayed ends, "Alright, Sam, I get it. You're fucking pissed at me – I won't say you don't have the right. You just go on being fucking pissed at me all you want, but I did it for your own..."

"Dean."

He didn't realize how much of a relief it would be to hear Sam say his name -- hell, to hear him say _anything_ \-- until it happened and Dean was left bracing himself with one hand on the hood of the Impala to keep his knees from buckling under him.

"Sometimes," Sam continued, and Dean let him, even though he really wanted a minute, or even thirty seconds, to just breathe, "I can't even look at you."

Dean felt his jaw fall open. He tried to reel it in, but none of his muscles seemed to be particularly responding.

"I _feel_ everything, Dean, and I can't keep one feeling from the next. I might actually be going crazy from it and sometimes I can't look at you because there's too much there at once for me to sort through. Way too much."

Okay, that made sense. You didn't go over a year with no soul in your body, feeling nothing, and then just slide easy as you please into feeling again; there had to be some kind of learning curve or an acclimation period, like getting over an epic case of emotional jet-lag.

"Okay – well -- it'll be okay if you just give it some time..."

"Stop telling me it's going to be okay!" Sam shouted, thumping his palm against the hood of the Impala with a sound like a thunder-crack. Immediately, he flinched and turned half-away from Dean, curling in on himself in embarrassment.

"Be mad at me if you want, Sam, but don't take it out on the car." Dean kept his tone light – even though, seriously, _his car_ \-- and Sam turned back just enough for Dean to see the edge of an apologetic smile on his lips.

"Sorry."

"Damn right. Now, what were you saying?"

Sam took a deep breath, and Dean ignored the way it rattled in his chest. If Sam burst into tears or something mortifyingly girly, he wasn't sure either of them would make it through this alive. "I'm not okay Dean. I'm not sure I'll ever _be_ okay. I hate being this way. I was happier when I couldn't feel anything...but," Here, another deep, rattling breath, "I want to be your brother again."

Dean wanted to say something like _you've always been my brother, Sam_ except that he hadn't felt that way at the time, and Sam knew it. Instead he said, "How can I help?"

"You can't."

Which was an alarmingly familiar answer, and made Dean feel about two inches tall, primed to be crushed under Sam's gargantuan boots.

"I did some terrible things Dean, some really _terrible_ things. I need to figure out what that means for me. I can’t do that here, with you. I’ve tried, but it’s too much."

Dean wanted like hell to say _it doesn’t mean anything, Sammy_ \-- but the lie was too sour on the back of his tongue to even attempt.

"You want to leave..." Dean was getting that wild, panic sensation, like watching Sam fall into an endless hole.

Sam finally looked at him, pained and apologetic, angry and afraid all at once. He'd always been shit at keeping his emotions off his face and now it was even worse. "Only for a while."

"No. No way Sam, I don't like the idea of you out there on your own. No fucking way." Sam's face started to change, like clouds rolling over the sun, and to stop another burst of anger, Dean jumped in with, "Let me think about it, okay? Just give me a little bit to think. And no more silent treatment, got it?"

"Okay."

Dean smothered his sigh of relief – one battle at a fucking time, please – and turned to go back to the house, stopping short when he realized Cas was standing on the porch watching them. His posture was relaxed – at least as relaxed as the angel ever really got – but something in the intensity of his gaze made it clear he was ready to jump in any second. He'd probably been attracted by the sound of Sam's shouting.

"Looks like Cas is hungry."

Sam huffed softly, "Angels don't eat, Dean."

"Well he's waiting for us anyway, and _I'm_ starving."

Sam slid off the Impala's hood, feet landing with a soft thump. "He loves you, ya know."

All of Dean's insides lurched. He felt like a rabbit on the run, caught suddenly in a snare -- _snap_ \-- weightless and terrified.

"What the hell, Sam? I would have let you keep up your mime act if I knew you were going to start spouting crazy all over the place."

When he looked, Sam was sporting an all too familiar bitch-face. "Seriously Dean, why do you think he keeps hanging around?"

"Easy," he thought of Cas' pained expression, the words _I would rather be here_ , "He misses being human."

“Dean, he _hated_ being human. He misses _you_.” Sam moved around him, heading for the house with his hands plunged deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched, taking long, slightly awkward strides like a guy who didn’t really feel like he fit inside his body. “You should at least tell him you miss him too.”

“He’s got _no legitimate reason_ to stay here – that’s what he said.”

“So, give him one.”

Dean watched Sam walk across the yard, climb the porch and move past Cas into the house. Cas nodded at him as he passed, but didn’t turn his eyes away from Dean, waiting patiently for him to follow after.

 _I’d rather be here_ Cas had said. Dean still couldn’t pulled himself together enough to say _I’d rather you were here too_.

***

Dean wasn’t an idiot, at least not all the time; he was stubborn as hell though, and he had more than enough pride to choke on if given half a chance. Most of the stupid things he’d done in his life came down to the massive load of pride carried around on his shoulders like a fucking cross, and Cas probably counted as one of those things.

If he didn’t have so much goddamn pride, he would never have let Cas go back to Heaven to play sheriff in the first place, because dammit, he _liked_ Cas; he would never go so far as to admit to himself that he _loved_ Cas, even the same way he loved Sam; but liked him, yeah, he could admit to that.

They had been on the edge of something for a good long while, him and Cas; Dean had never stopped to think about it, but it had something to do with free will. They – that was all three of them, Sam included – had been under the calloused thumb of destiny for so fucking long that they’d never really made effective use of their free will. Now they had a chance, and they knew it, and they still skirted around what they wanted because _free will_? That was for luckier people than them.

Middle of the night, watching _The Price is Right_ reruns and sliding in and out of consciousness, Dean realized that he wanted Sam happy. He would do anything to get Sam there, even let him go, if that was what Sam thought he needed. Dean had done every damn thing he could think of to make Sam better, and nothing he’d been able to do had completely worked. Maybe it was time to...not exactly cut his losses, because Sam could never be a _loss_ ; but just ease up for a while, step back and let Sam decide what was best for himself. Free will, and all that jazz.

“Dean,” Cas’ voice pulled him away from the distorted glow of the television screen, “you’re going to damage your neck if you sleep like that.”

Dean shifted, scrubbed a hand across his face. Cas was tucked into the corner of the couch with one knee up, reading a tattered romance novel he had found on one of Bobby’s bookshelves. Bobby claimed it had been Karen’s, but Dean was pretty sure there were smudges of motor oil on some of the pages.

“Wha’time izzit?”

“Late,” Cas answered, “or early.”

Dean yawned, scrubbed a hand through his hair, “Was that a joke?”

“I think I might be getting better at it.” Cas looked almost smug.

“Yeah, I think you are.” He watched Cas in the blue and orange half-light, and Cas watched him unflinchingly back in that weirdly gentle, non-judgemental way of his that still managed to make Dean feel like he’d been laid right open.

 _He loves you_ Sam had said. Dean thought maybe it was true. He expected it to maybe...freak him out, but it didn’t; he was weirdly okay with it. It was kind of terrifying as hell – because Dean had been a first-class sinner since grade-school and Cas was an _angel_ \-- but it was also sort of heady and wonderful, like a Six Flags rollercoaster.

It wasn’t like Dean had never been loved before, but it had been a long time since he’d actually been okay with it, since he’d wanted to give it a chance.

“Sam wants to leave.”

Cas tilted his head in that weird way that meant the gears in his brain were going faster than the speed of light. “I don’t think he’s well enough to hunt yet, Dean.”

“Not to hunt,” Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose, and fumbled blindly through the cushions with one hand for the dropped remote so he could mute the gleeful squeals of the newest showcase winner. “He wants to do some kind of wandering samurai thing, go out there and find himself.”

Cas frowned, “If Sam is having difficulties perceiving reality...”

“It’s a metaphor, Cas. He wants some time to be alone and think about shit. I’m going to let him go, I think.”

“Do you think that’s safe?”

Dean shrugged. “Maybe not. But maybe it’s the best thing to do.”

“And what are you going to do, when Sam goes?”

“I don’t know.” His fingers brushed something vaguely slimy between the cushions and closed at last around the remote. Dean pulled it free and plunged the living room into silence. “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“If I...” Dean took a deep breath, held it. He was coming up fast on the big drop, and he had to decide if he wanted to cling to the bar with all his strength, or throw his hands up and let weightlessness take him. “If I asked you to stay here – not go back to Heaven – would you do that?”

There was a long, imperfect silence, and Dean’s finger twitched above the mute button.

“Would you ask me?”

Dean dragged his feet off the coffee table, biting back a hiss at the deep ache in his knees. “I fucking hate it when people do that – answer a question with a question. That’s bullshit.”

“Dean...”

“I should’ve known, right? Goddamn angels can never give a straight answer to anything...”

" _Dean_."

The air crackled with the sound of Cas' voice, and that was probably a good hint to stop, but Dean was on a roll, a boulder going downhill, picking up speed.

"It _would_ be too much to ask, obviously, for you to think for yourself once and a while. Think _of_ yourself. I don't even get how you can be such a selfish son of a bitch and never manage to take anything..."

Cas grabbed him suddenly, by the wrist, pulling with enough strength that Dean had to turn sideways towards him to avoid broken bones, meeting Cas' implacable gaze and feeling it bore into him like a bullet.

“I don’t deal in hypothetical questions Dean.”

Dean took a hard breath and ground his teeth together, "Stay."

Cas blinked, changed the tilt of his head minutely, didn't loosen his grip. Dean's momentum had all dispersed, but he forced himself to push on anyway, to play through the pain, as his old man might have said.

"Don't go back to Heaven. Even just for a while. Let your brothers sort their own shit out."

"I can't." Cas' grip loosened, and Dean twisted his hand quickly, reversing their positions so his fingers were curled tight around Cas' wrist. If he really wanted to get away, there would be nothing stopping him, but Dean wanted to think it was enough to hold him in place.   
"Why? Why the fuck not? You hate playing sheriff, Cas – I know you do. And you know it's not working."

“I have to believe it will work.” There was something in his eyes, just the slightest spark of panic.

“What if it doesn’t Cas? What if you’re at the end of the line and there’s nothing else?”

Cas’ eyes were electric blue, catching the neon from the cheap television screen, his tongue flickered anxious and wet across his lower lip, and with his voice at a whisper he said, “Don’t say that.”

“C’mon Cas – if I’ve got enough balls to let Sam go then you’ve got more than enough balls to stand up and say that you’re sick of being Heaven’s bitch! What good is free will if you never use it?”

“What would you have me use it _for_?”

Dean was about ten seconds from throwing his hands up and walking away, “Anything!”

So Cas wrapped his hand in the collar of Dean’s shirt – there was a fraction of a second when Dean thought panicked and braced for the impact of a fist – pulled Dean forward across the couch so that Dean spilled awkwardly into his lap, nearly taking Cas’ knee in the ribs, and kissed him. It was too fast and a little too hard, but Dean went with it, brought his hand up to Cas’ shoulder and pushed him against the arm of the couch. Cas made a noise of protest in the back of his throat and started to reverse Dean’s momentum with unnatural ease until Dean pulled one knee up against Cas’ hip and caged him into the couch, thinking _you’re staying, staying, you’re not going fucking anywhere anymore_ even though it was pretty obvious from the way Cas was kissing him like the fate of the universe depended on him having his tongue in Dean’s mouth.

Dean pulled back for air, and Cas chased him almost blindly, biting at his lower lip, licking once at the corner of his mouth, “How was that?”

Dean just blinked stupidly for a moment, thinking he had lost his voice down the back of Cas’ throat. “It was a damned good start.”

***

“You’re going to call every day.”

Sam didn’t say anything, but his face was like a neon signboard, flashing _Oh my God, why do you do this to me?_

“Every other day,” Dean tried, ignoring Bobby’s exasperated sigh over his shoulder.

“Every Sunday,” Sam offered as compromise, “at two o’clock.”

“Is that two o’clock your time or my time because if we end up on opposite sides of the country...”

“Dean.”

“Okay, okay,” he pulled Sam into a rough hug, resisting the urge to clamp on and never let go, “Sioux Falls time.” Because that was something they could both easily remember, something programmed into their bones. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Sam chuckled softly, “That leaves me with a lot of options.”

“Right. Actually, do _everything_ I wouldn’t do. That’s safer.”

He managed to step back to let Bobby have his turn at squeezing Sam’s massive shoulder and calling him an idjit, telling him not to do anything stupid or hesitate to call if something came up – but it was a near thing. The voice in the back of Dean’s head was still going _don’t let go, don’t let go, don’tdon’tdon’t_ , but he was working hard to ignore it, to convince it that Sam could be fine, if given a chance. When Bobby stepped back, Cas moved forward, and Sam looked awkward for a moment, the muscles in his arms twitching visibly as he struggled to decide whether he should try and hug him or not. Cas put an end to the struggle by reaching up and putting the flat of his palm on Sam’s massive forehead. Sam crossed his eyes trying to get a look at the underside of Cas’ wrist or something as Cas muttered a couple of sentences in Enochian before dropping his hand.

“Safe travels Sam.”

“Uh...” Sam actually blushed, cheeks dimpling as he looked down at his shoes, “Thanks Cas.” Then he turned awkwardly on his heel, flashing Dean one last, careful grin and headed for Bobby’s old car, his duffels – one of clothes and one of weapons, because even though he claimed he wasn’t going to do any hunting, you could never be too prepared – over his shoulder. He had been hell-bent on not taking the Impala, which was okay, because Dean didn’t think he could manage to be without his car _and_ his brother, even if he held a quiet connoisseur’s grudge against Bobby’s old junker, reliable as it was.

Dean expected to feel more panicked at the sight of his brother walking away. Instead he felt the way he had back years ago when he’d gone with John on one of his surveillance runs to Stanford, catching sight of Sam through a throng of students – angry and proud, grateful and terrified all at once – it wasn’t an entirely bad sensation, just another rollercoaster.

“Hey,” Dean sidestepped, bumping Cas in the ribs with his elbow as Sam wheeled the car around and headed down the drive, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“The Enochian thing.”

There was a spark in Cas’ eyes that was the angelic version of a playful grin. “It’s not of import.”

“Fuck me...” Dean laughed, knowing the answer suddenly, like it had been beamed into his brain, “You just _blessed_ my brother.”

Cas kept his eyes locked on the car as it kicked up dust down the road and disappeared onto the highway, but his silence was as good as an affirmation. Gratitude hit Dean like a wave, sudden and heavy, almost enough to stagger him; definitely enough to make his eyes feel swollen and itchy – because even though Cas had stopped thinking of Sam as damned or tainted or whatever else probably years ago already, he didn’t give blessings to just anyone.

Dean put his hand on Cas’ shoulder, then moved it higher to cup the back of Cas’ neck in his palm. “Thanks Cas.”

***

 _Dean is almost asleep, late autumn sun warm on his face, fishing pole barely gripped in his hands. He hasn’t caught anything all day – wants to blame it on the fact that Cas has been sitting on the end of his dock with his feet in the water, even though the fish are nibbling at Cas’ toes, not the least bit afraid – and it doesn’t matter. The joy is in the fishing, not the catching._

 _His head is nodding against his shoulder when the phone rings, the familiar tones of “Smoke on the Water” tugging him towards consciousness. Cas doesn’t even ask before reaching into his pocked where it dangles free through the side of the folding chair and pulling the phone out._

 _“Hello, Sam.”_

 _Dean feels a lazy smile spread across his face. He straightens his slouch, scrubs a hand across his face and through his hair, chasing away the clouds in his head._

 _“Yes, we’re doing well.” Cas is saying; then, “your brother is perfectly capable of looking after himself.” and “Dean says I’m not supposed to discuss our relationship with you under any circumstances.”_

 _Dean figures that’s as good a time to step in as any, so he taps Cas on the shoulder and holds out his hand for the phone, which Cas passes over without warning Sam first. He still sucks at all but the most basic phone etiquette._

 _Dean tucks the phone between his ear and shoulder, runs his palm through the mess of Cas’ hair, and Cas pulls his hand down, kisses each of his fingers, like he’s worshipping them individually before he lets them go._

 _Dean grins into the phone, “Hey there Sammy...How’s it going?”_

-End-


End file.
